Monday, January 30, 2017

Reading Literature

Tenth graders finished their College Prep unit by making a Testive.com account so they can practice for the ACT or SAT at home.  This site will give them targeted practice with clear explanations for concepts they don't understand.  We watched a TED talk by Malcolm Gladwell about preferences in food variety and applied that to our writing and to people in general.  Tenth graders will be starting on a brief unit on the short stories of Russian writer Anton Chekhov.  We will focus on his endings and how he changed the traditional ending.  These are pretty quick reads and found online, I recommend reading The Bet if you are interested in Chekhov's writing.

Ninth graders will continue reading The Red Badge of Courage this week.  They took a vocabulary quiz today and began a character analysis of the protagonist in the form of a Bio Poem.  These are due Thursday.  Because of the writing style, this book at times requires students to back up and reread the text to really discover what is happening.  Students should take advantage of the group reading process to discuss and clarify what is happening as they read.

All students will take their first book report of the second semester on Wednesday.  Most students have finished their books so they should be planning for the next one, which will be in March 9.  We are half way through the quarter.  Students are having graded assignments regularly.  Please encourage your student to keep up on all assignments.

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